I too was crushed by car parking jobsworths

Not for one moment would I ever knowingly park illegally. I am the most timid car-parker in town. I check and double-check before walking away and pathetically allow a good 10 minutes extra on the meter every time.

So it was a bit upsetting suddenly to get a letter this week from Islington council, saying that a "Charge Certificate" had been issued against me for parking in a residents' bay in my own road back on 2 September, without "clearly displaying" a permit.

This threatening missive also said that the penalty had now been increased to £180 and if I didn't cough up within 14 days, the case would be passed to bailiffs. Charming.

And it was absolutely the first I'd heard of the matter. If, as the council claimed, a previous demand had been sent out some weeks ago, perhaps it had got lost in the postal strike? But how had I got a ticket in the first place? I have a valid residents' permit, just as I have a road licence, insurance, an up-to-date MOT and all the rest.

I rang the parking office and, after checking, it seemed that what had happened was that the sticky permit holder they supply had peeled back off the windscreen, leaving the permit hard to read. One zealous warden had decided that that left the permit not adequately displayed.

What to do? In large red type, it says on the bullying letter: "It is now too late to appeal against paying this penalty charge." Is trying worth the stress? The odds are stacked against you. Time to pay up and move on? Although feeling as though I'd been mugged, that's what I did.

As an afterthought, it suddenly occurred to me that there could yet be any number of these fines stacked up against me in the system, so I asked the not unsympathetic lady on the other end of the line to check. Thank the Lord, there were none. She even promised to post me not one but two new sticky permit holders.

Walking back from the Tube that evening, I'd almost forgotten the matter, but then it occurred to me to check on my wretched car to make sure the permit was irrefutably visible now. It was. But, freshly painted around the car, was a brand new disabled parking only bay that hadn't been there in the morning. And there, on the windscreen, there was another fine, for £120 this time.

Of course, many others have much worse experiences - cars towed, court orders issued - quite as unfairly. And, unlike the usual forms of conviction and punishment in this country, there is no presumption of innocence: exactly the opposite. The parking system works by crushing-opposition before it begins. Being caught up in it is not just expensive and disheartening but humiliating, too, as injustice always is. It leaves you feeling, in the immortal words of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, "Why bother?" With a car, certainly.